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When US-raised, London-based 60-year-old grandmother Monica Porter split with her partner of 15 years, she turned to the internet for comfort. Would there be men out there willing to give her the time of day, and more?

At first not. Or not the time of day she wanted. But after shaving six years off her age, posting a profile stating ‘After a lot of disappointments in love, I realise that all men are rascals, so I’m just looking to have a nice time with people I like’, the offers began to flow.

Some near to her own age, but a surprising number of 20-somethings. In her newly published account of her sexual exploits called Raven: My Year of Dating Dangerously (Thistle), Porter recounts the thrills, dangers and eventual frustration she experienced, sleeping with 15 men in a hectic year – including two men in their 20s in one eventful evening.

Addictive apps

“Mobile apps like Tinder [the most fruitful of her dating aids] are completely addictive,” says Porter. “It’s like a game that’s really hard to stop playing.”

In her case, it was also a research project with a confessional book in mind: she took notes of each conquest and was fully expecting the controversy which broke when the Mail on Sunday – one of the UK’s most read tabloids – serialised her tale. She was on prime time UK, Australian, even Turkish television, leaving viewers agog at the sight of such a liberated grandmother, so happy and confident as she boasted of her promiscuity.

Some British writers sniped: “The fact is, no-strings sex is cheap and demeaning – and that’s as true when you’re 60 as it is when you’re 16,” wrote columnist Amanda Platell in the Daily Mail (owned by the same publisher as the Mail on Sunday, but a bitter rival these days).

Fresh meat

The zeitgeist-shifting part of the story was the relish with which Porter described her encounters, fully living up to the caricature of ‘cougar’ – avid for fresh young meat. We have become used to the notion of over-60s enjoying a healthy and active sex life; we’re familiar with older men dating younger women; but a 30-40-year gap in the other direction is still taboo-breaking.

From the reaction of many who have written to her, older women dating younger men is increasingly common, if rarely so well publicised. The internet has removed the social and logistical obstacles to cross-generational contact, putting us all no more than a few clicks and swipes away from some very novel experiences.

As for discovering a longer-term passion, Porter eventually deleted her dating account. “It strikes me that meeting someone special via an online service is unlikely. You’d both have to come to the decision to stop the dating game at the same time.”

Thanks to the global notoriety of her book and her multiple media appearances, Porter now gets invitations from college professors, captains of industry, fellow writers – all of them around her own age.